Financial Action Task Force and partners launch handbook to strengthen international cooperation on money laundering investigations

The Financial Action Task Force, alongside the Egmont Group, INTERPOL and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, has published a practical Handbook on International Cooperation against Money Laundering and urged countries to improve cross-border collaboration to speed up detection, investigation and prosecution. The release highlights that money laundering typically spans jurisdictions and notes that FATF evaluations continue to find investigation, prosecution and sanctioning of money laundering among the weakest areas globally. The handbook promotes practical approaches to cooperation, including informal channels such as secure communications, rapid response mechanisms and joint analysis, to complement slower and more procedurally complex formal legal processes. It is accompanied by three practical guides aimed at financial intelligence units, law enforcement agencies and prosecutors, and includes case examples such as a €95 million cross-border laundering scheme uncovered through FIU joint analysis, Operation AVARUS-X in Australia targeting laundering via money service businesses transferring billions of AUD annually, and coordinated US-India action that seized cryptocurrency assets worth USD 150 million linked to drug trafficking. UNODC positioned the publication as a resource ahead of the UN Crime Congress in April 2026 in the United Arab Emirates, where Member States are expected to exchange good practices on financial investigations and recommit to targeting criminal proceeds.